Kimberly-Clark Corporation Announces New Global Marketing Structure
DALLAS, April 2, 2007 Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NYSE:KMB) today unveiled the structure for its new Global Marketing organization as part of its ongoing effort to extend its brand-building capabilities, accelerate growth and product innovation, and improve the effectiveness of its marketing resources. As part of the new structure, three senior executives with extensive consumer products and marketing experience will join K-C in new roles that report to Chief Marketing Officer Tony Palmer. Mr. Palmer joined
K-C in October of last year.
"Kimberly-Clark has great strengths in brands, people and leadership," Mr. Palmer said. "The changes announced today are designed to build on our strong talent base to take K-C's global marketing capabilities and teams to the next level and to transform this important business function into a strategic driver of growth and innovation in support of our Global Business Plan.
"We are building a marketing organization that enables great marketers to develop and grow professionally as they drive exceptional business performance for K-C worldwide."
K-C Creates Three New Global Marketing Leadership Roles
In support of these priorities, K-C has hired three senior marketing leaders to work with Mr. Palmer and
K-C's marketing teams worldwide to expand the company's marketing prowess and capabilities.
Andrew Bienkowski will join K-C in the newly created role of Vice President, Global Brands, responsible for leading the development of brand strategies for all global Consumer, Health Care and K-C Professional brands, prioritizing global brand innovation opportunities, and integrating these plans with business units and geographies. In this role, Mr. Bienkowski will work with Mr. Palmer to establish a Global Marketing Leadership Team and several Global Brand Leadership Teams. Most recently, Mr. Bienkowski served as group marketing director for The Coca-Cola Company, serving as the CMO for the company's core Coke, Fanta and Sprite brands in 56 global markets. Prior to Coca-Cola, he worked for 12 years at Procter & Gamble in brand, country and marketing management roles around the world. He started his business career at Andersen Consulting.
Roger Chacko is joining K-C in the new position of Vice President, Global Marketing Knowledge and Intelligence. In this role, Mr. Chacko will be responsible for the establishment of best practices, standardization of consumer research tools, and brand research across all global business units. He will have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring K-C has a deep understanding of the unmet needs of customers, shoppers and users across all businesses and for working with teams to convert these insights into viable new product ideas for exploration by K-C's Innovation and Product & Technology Development teams. Mr. Chacko previously served as senior vice president strategy development for consumer, channel, competitive and category intelligence in North America at Mars, Inc. and has more than 17 years of market research and marketing experience with leading consumer companies, including The Kellogg Company, Danone Group and ConAgra Foods, Inc.
Clive Sirkin has joined K-C in the newly created role of Vice President, Global Integrated Marketing Communications. He will be responsible for developing plans to integrate and manage marketing communications worldwide, including agency selection and relationship management and provider metrics and measurement. In this role, Mr. Sirkin will ensure K-C is leveraging its scale and maximizing value from its agency partnerships and its advertising and promotional spending. Prior to joining Kimberly-Clark, he was group managing director for advertising agency Leo Burnett Worldwide, responsible for worldwide business strategy and the implementation of the agency's global creative agenda. He joined Burnett in 1989 and served in a number of management roles across the global organization. He previously worked in operations and finance positions outside the advertising business.
Global Leadership Team Structure for Marketing
To provide clear guidance and leadership for marketing, K-C is establishing a Global Marketing Leadership Team, which will be responsible for shaping K-C's marketing vision, beliefs and priorities globally, for overseeing marketing policies, talent development and best practices, and for guiding resource allocation for marketing and innovation. The team will include representatives from K-C's businesses worldwide and will be led by Mr. Palmer.
K-C will also create Global Brand Leadership teams to set global brand strategy and governance, share knowledge and guide innovation and investment priorities for its key brands at the global level. The first two Global Brand Leadership teams being put in place will focus on the Kimberly-Clark and Huggies brands.
"Our new marketing structure will help us find new ways to deliver the promise of our brands through product and service innovations, help us discover new and surprising ways to better connect with consumers with relevant and meaningful messages, and help us maximize the return on our marketing investment," Mr. Palmer said.
"I am confident that the new Global Marketing organization, together with the members of the Brand Leadership and local marketing teams, will help accelerate delivery of our Global Business Plan. Ultimately, I believe these actions will lead to sustainable revenue growth, improved margins and greater profitability as we evolve K-C into a legendary marketing company."
About Kimberly-Clark
Kimberly-Clark and its well-known global brands are an indispensable part of life for people in more than 150 countries. Every day, 1.3 billion peoplenearly a quarter of the world's populationtrust K-C brands and the solutions they provide to enhance their health, hygiene and well-being. With brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, Kimberly-Clark holds the No. 1 or No. 2 share position in more than 80 countries. To keep up with the latest K-C news and to learn more about the company's
135-year history of innovation, visit www.kimberly-clark.com.
